"The problem with popularity is that if it gets too popular everybody
leaves and goes somewhere else."
..................................Mike Love, 1975

"I like to see a group or person entertain me...that's why I wear my
gold lame jacket and turban. Even though Carl dresses pretty spiffy
too, the rest of the group doesn't care so much. Of course, just because
Al Jardine hasn't changed his underwear since the Japan tour in
sixty-five--I mean you can't ask for everything."
..................................Mike Love

"I am always thinking of those kinds of things when I am writing a
lyric--same as I did with 'Kokomo', which was No. 1 in 1988, whereas
Brian's solo album came out and didn't have one hit record on it."
..................................Mike Love, 1993

"What holds us together as a team now is music...and greed."
..................................Mike Love

"And one of the greatest things that interested me was that he (the
Maharishi) said 'You don't have to give up your Rolls Royce...and forsake
all your pursuits of material pleasures...to develop innerspiritual
qualities'. That sounded real good to me."
..................................Mike Love, 1968

"I think it's difficult to promote and be commercially successful with an
album that's called 'Sweet Insanity'...I don't think that's very mainstream
pop."
..................................Mike Love, 1993

"I was in the oil business for a while--gas and oil, check the tires."
..................................Mike Love

Dennis Wilson

"I can tell you the day the Beach Boys will no longer exist--never. We'll
be on stage in wheelchairs."
..................................Dennis Wilson, 1977

"Nothing will ever top the expression on Brian's face, ever... that was
the all time moment."
..................................Dennis Wilson, on the first time
..................................they all heard "Surfin'" on the
..................................radio in Brian's car.

"Because of the attitude of a few mental dinosaurs intent on exploiting
our initial success, Brian's huge talent has never been fully appreciated
in America and the potential of the group has been stifled.... If the
Beatles had suffered this kind of misrepresentation, they would have
never got past singing 'Please Please Me' and 'I Wanna
Hold Your Hand'
and leaping around in Beatle suits."
..................................Dennis Wilson, 1970

"Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his fucking
messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's
everything."
..................................Dennis Wilson

"I made a dollar a day sweeping a laundry out. Then we made a record
that was number two in Los Angeles. We got so excited hearing it on the
radio that Carl threw up."
..................................Dennis Wilson

"People always thought Brian was a good time guy until he started doing
those heavy, searching songs on 'Pet Sounds' and all, but that stuff was
closer to his own personality and perceptions. By the time people get
close to an accurate picture of Brian Wilson--if ever-- he's gonna be far
beyond them again, and I can dig his frustration."
..................................Dennis Wilson, 1976

"Brian Wilson is not a good looking human being, yet his music is
beautiful. Look at Nat King Cole--he looked like a real piece of shit
but he had a beautiful voice. Look at Aretha Franklin--she would scare
me in a dark room, yet her voice is fantastic. Roy Orbison too. The
thing I listen too is the music."
..................................Dennis Wilson, 1976

"The Beach Boys are not a superstar group. The music is the superstar
of the group."
..................................Dennis Wilson

"I hope that the karma will fuck up Mike Love's meditation forever. That
album is an embarrassment to my life. It should
self-destruct."
..................................Dennis Wilson, 1979 on "M.I.U."

"If there wasn't The Beach Boys and there wasn't music, I would not even
talk to them. But through music I fell in love with my
brothers."
..................................Dennis Wilson

Brian Wilson

"A voice or a song can be so comforting to someone who really needs it."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1990

"I'm not a genius. I'm just a hard-working guy."
..................................Brian Wilson

"People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of
emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and
sunshine and so on...like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to
youth."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1966

"I've had emotional gangsters run my life for 20 years. I pray to God
with all my heart and soul that it doesn't happen again."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1995

"I don't think I am a genius. I believe the word genius applies only to
people who can do things that other people can't do. I can't do things
others can't. I wasn't a genius in high school, and I'm not
now."
..................................Brian Wilson

"Being called a musical genius was a cross to bear. Genius is a
big word. But if you have to live up to something, you might as well
live up to that. God damn!"
..................................Brian Wilson, 1988

"The BB's are out. The BB's are being arseholes to me. So. I take the
lesser of two evils; I'll work on myown, solo, before I work with a
bunch of guys that don't give a shit about me...they just spit at me and
kick me, no respect at all."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1995

"You say how you feel, and songs don't lie. Songs are the most honest
form of human expression there is--there's nothing that lies about a
song."
..................................Brian Wilson

"I approach my music-making as an art-form--something pure from the
spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is
genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding
dynamics is like nothing else on earth."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1966

"Some people might think that sex is the highest experience you can
have. I tend to think that music is."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1988

"Well, yeah, I've had obstacles in my life. And I have a name to live up
to. That alone was a hardship for me, living up to my name. Goddamn was
it hard."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1988

"There's nothing greater than a girl.... Well a kid, your daughter, but
that's a girl too."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1979

"You're called a genius by people, and then your whole life you become
the part."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1988

"I've never written one note or word of music simply because I think it
will make money."
..................................Brian Wilson, 1965

Carl Wilson

"Every once in a while, an individual is born into the world whose whole
being is music. I think Brian is one of those rare people."
..................................Carl Wilson, 1969

"In Fort Worth, Texas there is a drug clinic which takes people off the
streets and helps them get over bad LSD trips. They don't use any
traditional medical treatment whatsoever. All they do is play the
patient our 'Smiley Smile' album and apparently this acts as a soothing
remedy which relaxes them and helps them to recover completely from their
trip."
..................................Carl Wilson, 1970

Al Jardine

"Brian is an anachronism in his own time. You accept him for what he
is. If he says he's coming to the studio, you stop what you are doing
and go, because when he does something, he does it for keeps. But today
he's a short-distance runner. He's not running the 440 at this stage of
his life. But he's a killer in the 100 yard dash."
..................................Al Jardine, 1978

Bruce Johnston

"The public thinks of us as surfing Doris Days."
..................................Bruce Johnston

"I'd swap a lot of the Beach Boys songs for just one 'Michelle.'"
..................................Bruce Johnston

"I think when we finally heard 'Good Vibrations' edited, mixed, we
thought we were gonna have the biggest hit in the world or the
career was
over."
..................................Bruce Johnston, 1966

Other People

"I have nothing but affection, admiration and regard for Brian. If he's
not the greatest ever at what he does then maybe you can't pick a 'one
greatest' in areas like this. Maybe you have to lump half a dozen or so
together and say 'jump ball'!"
..................................Tony Asher

"Brian and I are partners in life."
..................................Dr. Landy, 1988

"I thought Brian was a perfect gentleman, apart from buttering his head
and trying to put it between two slices of bread"
..................................Tom Petty, after eating with Brian.

"If there is one person I have to
select as a living genius of pop music, I would choose Brian Wilson."
..................................George Martin (Beatles producer)

"We were all so poor we'd just sit around singing and on occasion drink a
brew; not the children, the adults. And then I bought a Hammond electric
organ, on time, and we'd play duets, my wife and I. And then Brian would
get in on the act and sing. All they ever heard was music in the house.
And on occasion family arguments."
..................................Murry Wilson

"People should never be allowed to say 'no' to Brian Wilson... cause if you
just get behind him, or next to him, and go with him, it's gonna come out
okay."

..................................David Anderle, 1968

"Music is Brian Wilson's best friend, lover, everything. On a one-to-one
basis, it's the only thing that has never wronged him."
..................................Van Dyke Parks

"We got along really well. I always appreciated his stuff. It always had
that tongue-in-cheek humor. Brian had an odd little way of looking at life,
differently than the average person did. And I appreciated that."
..................................Dean Torrence

"In short, Brian Wilson lived in terror of public failure. A lot has been
made of his drug use/abuse, which may indeed have had searing effects
upon him. But it was the public failure of Heroes to to wow Capitol and
thus wow the world that caused him to withdraw."
..................................Jack Reiley